Glossary · AI-native development
Model Router
A component that selects a model or provider for a request using requirements such as capability, latency, cost, context size, policy, and current availability.
Why it matters
Different tasks and failure conditions justify different models, and routing can improve outcome quality without sending every request to the largest option.
In practice
Send low-risk extraction to a fast model, complex code review to a stronger model, and fail over only to providers that satisfy the same data policy.
Common confusion
Routing is a policy decision. Random load balancing only distributes traffic.
Related terms
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